The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is located in the Caribbean Sea, about
1,000 mi east-southeast of Miami, Fla. A possession of the United States,
it consists of the island of Puerto Rico plus the adjacent islets of
Vieques, Culebra, and Mona. Puerto Rico has a mountainous, tropical
ecosystem with very little flat land and few mineral resources.

Puerto Rico's governor is elected directly for a four-year term. A
bicameral legislature consists of a 27-member Senate and a 51-member House
of Representatives, all elected for four-year terms. From 1940 to 1968,
Puerto Rican politics was dominated by a party advocating voluntary
association with the U.S. Since then, the New Progressive Party, a party
favoring U.S. statehood, has won five of the last eight gubernatorial
elections. Puerto Ricans have twice voted to determine their political
status. In 1967, the outcome was Commonwealth 60%; statehood 39%;
independence 1%. In 1993, Commonwealth dropped to 48.6%; statehood rose to
46.3%; independence polled 4.4%; and 0.6% of the ballots were blank or
spoiled.

Under the Commonwealth formula, residents of Puerto Rico lack voting
representation in Congress and do not participate in presidential
elections. As U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans are subject to military service
and most federal laws. Residents of the Commonwealth pay no federal income
tax on locally generated earnings, but Puerto Rican government income-tax
rates are set at a level that closely parallels federal-plus-state levies
on the mainland.

When Christopher Columbus arrived there in 1493, the island was
inhabited by the peaceful Arawak Indians, who were being challenged by the
warlike Carib Indians. Puerto Rico remained economically undeveloped until
1830, when sugarcane, coffee, and tobacco plantations were gradually
developed. After Puerto Ricans began to press for independence, Spain
granted the island broad powers of self-government in 1897. But during the
Spanish-American War of 1898 American troops invaded the island and Spain
ceded it to the U.S. Since then, Puerto Rico has remained an
unincorporated U.S. territory. Its people were granted American
citizenship under the Jones Act in 1917; were permitted to elect their own
governor, beginning in 1948; and now fully administer their internal
affairs under a constitution approved by the U.S. Congress in 1952. In
spite of broad popular support for the autonomy of the Commonwealth
government and a rapidly modernizing industrial society, there were
expressions of dissatisfaction. Puerto Rican extremists dramatized their
desire for independence with an attempt to assassinate President Truman on
Nov. 1, 1950, and on March 1, 1954, they wounded five congressmen in an
attack on the U.S. Capitol.

A self-help program of economic development and social welfare (called
“Operation Bootstrap”) was forged in the 1940s by four-time governor Luis
Muñoz Marín. In a little more than four decades, much of the island's
crushing poverty was eliminated. This was done partly through the
development of manufacturing and service industries, the latter related to
an enormous growth in tourism. Also, many Puerto Ricans migrated to large
cities on the mainland U.S.

Puerto Rico is a major hub of Caribbean commerce, finance, tourism, and
communications. San Juan is one of the world's busiest cruise-ship ports,
and Puerto Rico's standard of living continues to be among the highest in
the Western Hemisphere. Its future political status, however, remains
unclear. On March 4, 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill
that called for binding elections in Puerto Rico to decide the island's
permanent political status.

Since the 1940s, the U.S. Navy had used Vieques island as a bombing
range. Protests against the exercises grew in recent years, and in a July
2001 referendum, residents of the island voted overwhelmingly to close the
base. The navy withdrew from Vieques in May 2003.

The Nov. 2, 2004, gubernatorial elections led to a two-month recount
and a court challenge. On Jan. 2, 2005, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá of the Popular
Democratic Party was declared governor. He received 48.4% of the vote, and
his main challenger, Pedro Rossello of the New Progressive Party, 48.2%.
Acevedo supports the existing U.S. territorial status of the island;
Rossello supports statehood for Puerto Rico.

In May 2006, a political standoff led to a two-week-long budget crisis
resulting in the partial shutdown of the government, including all public
schools. More than 100,000 workers went without pay.

On November 4, 2008, Luis Fortuño became
the ninth Governor of Puerto Rico. Fortuño won by more than 220,000 votes,
the largest margin in 44 years. In June 2011, Fortuño announced that he would
run for re-election.

On November 6, 2012, Puerto Rico will hold a referendum on independence, statehood,
or to remain in territorial status. The vote will happen on the same day as the general
election. This is the fourth referendum on Puerto Rico's political status. The previous
ones, held in 1967, 1993, 1998, have all resulted in favor of remaining in territorial status.